“Can a bass amp company offer anything good for the guitarist?”
We asked ourselves that question for the first time a few years ago, encouraged by the fact that EBS bass effects where popping up here and there with high profile guitarists like Brad Paisley, Steve Morse, Beck’s Lyle Workman, Primus´s Ler Lalonde, and Justin Timberlake/Prince guitarist Mike Scott – all completely without our involvement and revealed through various interviews, rig rundowns and in some cases by the guitarists approaching us and let us know they love our stuff and use it on all their gigs.
It made sense, since the EBS effects are full range, studio quality sound effects; they are very all-round and suitable for any type of instrument. So, we thought let’s see what happens if we promote the pedals towards guitarists more? We engaged some of these guitarists as ambassadors by offering endorsements, hooked up with Mick Thomson of Slipknot and a few others, and we did demo videos with Ola Englund whose YouTube subscribers exceeded 40’000 guitarists at the time.
Along the way, we discovered a few bumps on the road to success as well as collected some valuable thoughts from our new guitarist customers inspiring us to take it a step further…
The big obstacle against offering bass specialized effects to guitarists is mainly about the infrastructure of the Music Instrument sales business. Almost any physical store has a GUITAR effects department and a BASS effects department. Anything that ends up on the BASS effects shelf naturally will be kept a secret from 99% of the guitarists visiting the shop. A similar structure is common on online stores, where effects get categorized and sorted in a similar way, and only found by the guitarist that actively search for the specific product – meaning he or she has to know exactly what they looking for before entering a store to even give it a try.
The feedback from guitarists using EBS effects in general has been overwhelmingly good! Still, we’ve seen suggestions about tweaks that would make them even more suitable for guitar, and requests for specific modes to turn “great” into “perfection”.
So, with all this valuable lessons and input adding the input from a group of professional guitar players based in Stockholm, we simply made the decision to take the full step into the field of guitar effects and launch the EBS Red Label Pedals – Guitar Edition.
The first three models are launched at MUSIKMESSE 2015. DynaVerb Guitar Edition, MultiComp Guitar Edition and improved and developed version of the legendary Red Twister Chorus/Flanger effect, that we made in a very limited number some 15 years ago, and ever since has been a sought after rarity on the second hand market of guitar effects.
Expect to see the first ones in stores already before the summer, World-wide availability should happen at the beginning of fall 2015. Price is to be announced, but expect it to be about the same level as the Black Label Pedals for bass.
COME BACK TOMORROW FOR MORE NEW EBS PRODUCTS LAUNCHED AT MUSIKMESSE 2015!
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